Categories: Articles

All Businesses Can Act Like They're From Silicon Valley

Corporate culture is a huge part of what makes a business successful.

There’s a statement that no single business professional would ever challenge. The problem, of course, is that cultures are often hard to control, understand and nurture. Sometimes they happen in an organic way, and sometimes they come from a strong management team. There are instances when an individual’s brand is the corporate culture (Steve Job, Elon Musk, etc…), and there are instances when the culture is affected by outside forces. All of us struggle with corporate culture. How to define it. How to work it. How to make a corporate culture work towards better business results. When we look at some of the more interesting brands, we often marvel at the perks and benefits that come along with it (and how it attracts and retains the talent). A lot of the attention over the past few decades has been given to Silicon Valley, when it comes to newish kinds of corporate culture. As “present” at Twitter is, it is still a relatively new organization that is growing at a massive click, as it struggles to maintain their corporate culture, while evolving with the realities that come with being a publicly traded company.

Can your business think like Twitter?

Earlier this week, Fortune Magazine held its 2015 Great Places To Work Conference. With that, the event featured a very interesting (and in-depth) conversation with Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, about how the company has changed, how they maintain culture and how transparent they really are (both to the public and to their employees). Fortune Senior Editor, Christopher Tkaczy, does a great job of probing and dissecting Twitter. Within this interview also lies many interesting tips, tricks and strategies that any business can apply, as they adapt to the digital transformations that we all face on a daily basis.

Twitter sounds like a great (and transparent) place to work…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.